Thursday, January 26, 2006

Hallmarks

"Hometown Evening" - 1998 by Thomas Kinkade

Well, Hick, this might or might not be Placerville. But I do like it. It's odd, seeing paintings of an America that only exists in dreams. Don't you agree?

Thomas Kinkade has a series - Sweetheart Cottage? - that's like that. Beautiful setting for each, but only a dream setting. And still, I have to return to gaze at it. For Kinkade, it's that "Painter of Light" hallmark that puts him in his own class. The illusion of light - candles, lampposts, reflected moonlight, and so on - that is the hallmark of a Kinkade painting is widely imitated. Sometimes those imitations have been quite good. They are, in their way, an homage to Kinkade. But there are a mountain of bad imitations, too. Yet, you can always seem to pick out the Kinkades from the fakes.

"Moonlight Cottage" - 2001 by Thomas Kinkade

Look at the puddle, the reflection within it. Sorry, those of you who find this pedestrian, lower-class, beneath you. This is Art. I love it! Complete with Kinkade's hallmark - the light!

Yes, Kinkade seems to be doing the Warhol thing in recent years - mass-producing product, dabbing a few bits of paint on an assembly line of canvases to add his 'touch' to the copies (copies that are hand-painted, just not by him) before they go on sale. That part seems tawdry at first glance. Commercial as opposed to Artistic.

Well, why not? He isn't the first! I can't remember if it was DaVinci or Michelangelo, but one, or maybe all of them did similar things. Using a school of apprentices to do the work under their guidance, the classic painters still garnered the credit, money, and plaudits for the finished product. Kinkade simply is doing what the painters of old did. And doing it very well, indeed!

I think that's the worst of it, too. To the Elite critics, it's his success that is his sin. Artists must suffer in their own time, and be incomprehensible to most people to be true artists. Otherwise they are 'commercial', simplistic, good only for placemats in diners.

So color me plaid and give me a Big Mac! I don't care! The Critics are idiots with inflated opinions of themselves. Piss on 'em!